A record of an art quilter's life. The site name comes from Natalie Goldberg's phrase 'falling down the well' to describe the experience of becoming immersed in the trance of writing (or other creative activity.)

Sunday, May 03, 2009

Creative laziness at Cedar Farm

This morning we took a Sunday drive out to Cedar Farm which is a misleading name because it is more arts centre than farm - although it does have a small area with animals for children to look at - which is why Dennis likes going although he remains disappointed that for some time there have been no rabbits. However, he got Brownie points today when he pointed out one, new, gloriously coloured bird ( which would, as you can see, not stand still for photos) and said, "Those would make good colours for a quilt."

There are several buildings with artists studios and also a good crafty gift shop and art store.

There is a cafe and also a coffee house in an industrial building which they make homely with squishy sofas and baskets of magazines. And blueberry cheesecake muffins. It is a good place to hang out and read and also to do a bit of sketchbooking. I am trying to find time to do more of that and to build up my lamentably lacking skills with art products.

Today I took a small set of watercolours with a little bottle of water and a tin of aquarelle crayons. I got there and could see nothing to draw until I spotted a dying dandelion head on the floor. Here are my resulting pages.

The last page is a section of the first page and I got the idea from reading Red by Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn which is one of their embroidery pamphlets ( you can see the series here) while I was there.

I am collecting the series - at £7.50 for a pamphlet they are not cheap but I do like the pictures!! Dennis almost got more Brownie points when he said he would buy me too more at the Quilt Show in Malvern in a fortnight. But then he lost them:

"Really?" I said, are you sure - they are quite expensive considering they only have 28 pages.

"I know" he said, brandishing his 850 page book he bought for £4.50. "But two of those books is the same as I would have paid if I'd come to the show with you."

"So you are buying me the books as kind of insurance so you don't have to come into the quilt show?"

3 comments:

D'you know what I think? Give the man his brownie point!! Those Jan and Jean books are so valuable its worth it! I know what you mean about the pages to pound ratio but let's face it you get 110% solid value from cover to cover and there's a fair few books out there that only give about 50 - 75%.PS if you don't want them ...

my husband would have got a brownie point for buying the books, and an extra brownie point for NOT attending the show. mine would drag around yawning and saying things like 'a skein of thread costs HOW MUCH....you've got to be kidding?'

Please, give the man his brownie points! My DH never buys me any books and never ever wants to set foot in a quilting show. I am 'allowed' to enter quilting shows if we are on family holidays, but DH keeps lurking at the outside. That puts quite a stop to enjoying the show.My DH is really supportive in all other aspects of life and together with the children just bought me a lovely sculpture of three little ceramic birds (which I pointed out to him) for mothers day, so I don't complain.